The Lovell Beach House is located on the

Balboa Peninsula The Balboa Peninsula (also referred to as "Balboa" or "the Peninsula") is a neighborhood of the city of Newport Beach, Orange County, California. It is named after Spanish explorer Vasco Núñez de Balboa, the first European to sight the Pacific ...

Newport Beach, California Newport Beach is a coastal city in South Orange County, California. Newport Beach is known for swimming and sandy beaches. Newport Harbor once supported maritime industries however today, it is used mostly for recreation. Balboa Island, Newport ...

. The building was completed in 1926 and is now recognized as one of the most important works by architect Rudolf Schindler, second only to the

Schindler House The Schindler House, also known as the Schindler Chace House or Kings Road House, is a house in West Hollywood, California, designed by architect Rudolph M. Schindler. The house serves as headquarters to the MAK Center for Art and Architecture ...

, built four years earlier for his family as a show house and studio. Both of these early houses by Schindler are considered landmarks of early

modern architecture Modern architecture, or modernist architecture, was an architectural movement or architectural style based upon new and innovative technologies of construction, particularly the use of glass, steel, and reinforced concrete; the idea that form ...

in America. The residence is on the ocean front, not far from The Wedge at Newport Harbor, in a tightly packed neighborhood of buildings. The house is sheltered from the street on the west side by raising the living quarters above the ground level. The open space below reveals the

reinforced concrete Reinforced concrete (RC), also called reinforced cement concrete (RCC) and ferroconcrete, is a composite material in which concrete's relatively low tensile strength and ductility are compensated for by the inclusion of reinforcement having hig ...

frames that were formed in the shape of a figure 8. Two stairways pass through the openings in the frames leading to the kitchen and the main entry. The garage is on the north side of the ground floor and the garden is on the south side, between the house and the beach. The interior is arranged around a two-story living/dining room, with full height, curtain wall windows on the east and south side facing the ocean. The kitchen and breakfast area are located on the north side of the first floor, with a terrace on the ocean side over the garden. Lamps and built-in furniture were provided as part of the original design. Bedrooms on the second floor are connected by a corridor overlooking the main living room. Each of the bedrooms originally had access to an open

sleeping porch A sleeping porch is a deck or balcony, sometimes screened or otherwise enclosed with screened windows,Lovell "Health House" was completed in 1929 on Dundee Drive in Los Angeles, three years after the Beach House was finished. This commission was awarded to

Richard Neutra Richard Joseph Neutra ( ; April 8, 1892 – April 16, 1970) was an Austrian-American architect. Living and building for the majority of his career in Southern California, he came to be considered a prominent and important modernist architect. He ...

, who was living with his wife in a part of Schindler's House and studio between 1926 and 1930. These two architects created houses that became classic forms of the new California residential design, and icons of the Modern movement in America.

Historic significance

The Los Angeles branch of the

Historic American Buildings Survey Heritage Documentation Programs (HDP) is a division of the U.S. National Park Service (NPS) responsible for administering the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS), Historic American Engineering Record (HAER), and Historic American Landscapes ...

(HABS) documented the house in 1968. The house today has much the same appearance as the photographs taken during the survey. The significance of the house was already apparent at the time:

The Lovell Beach House is generally considered one of the greatest works of pioneering modern architect, R. M. Schindler. It demonstrates an early use of concrete which predates and predicts the post-war Brutalist style, in which concrete is left unsurfaced, and structure is distinct from enclosure. ... The house is lifted above its beach site and cradled in five concrete frames in the shape of figure 8's. These were poured in place. The enclosed areas were shop-fabricated and hoisted into position. The play of forms in the advancing and receding planes are related to the
De Stijl ''De Stijl'' (; ), Dutch for "The Style", also known as Neoplasticism, was a Dutch art movement founded in 1917 in Leiden. De Stijl consisted of artists and architects. In a more narrow sense, the term ''De Stijl'' is used to refer to a body o ...
movement begun in the Netherlands in 1917.

The Beach House was listed as a Registered Historic Place in California on February 5, 1974.

References

External links

*
Great Buildings Architecture: P. Lovell House by Rudolf M. Schindler

MAK Center: Schindler House and Studio
University Art Museum, University of California at Santa Barbara *{{HABS , survey=CA-1986 , id=ca0448 , title=Lovell Beach House, Newport Beach, 1242 West Ocean Front, Orange County, CA , photos=10 , dwgs=10 , data=6 , cap=1 Houses in Orange County, California Modernist architecture in California Buildings and structures in Newport Beach, California Balboa Peninsula Houses completed in 1926 Houses on the National Register of Historic Places in California National Register of Historic Places in Orange County, California Historic American Buildings Survey in California Constructivist architecture International style architecture in California Rudolph Schindler buildings 1926 establishments in California

Historic significance

See also

References

External links